Kitchen Sink

Washing up is a great leveller, and can be as comforting as hearing Trevor McDonald read the news. Surface simplicity with no hidden agendas.

A friend of mine has been writing about contemplative prayer and how to go about it. It's complicated, but really straightforward at the same time. It's complex because it involves getting beyond the constant chatter that crashes around inside the head, a kind of ego management that you realise goes the opposite way to the survival mechanism most of us have running as auto-pilot, most of the time. That auto-pilot sounds a bit like this:

"I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, I have to be right or I'll look stupid or maybe not stupid but even so, it's still nice to be right and I'm only doing what I think is best"

Contemplative prayer takes you above and beyond obsessing like this and is therefore why washing up comes to mind, because you're not even doing what's best, you're just doing. You're not right, you just are. You don't look stupid, you're just looking. For a bowl's worth of water, you don't have reason to engage in ego management (unless you fall into competitive scrubbing), you are just performing a little ritual cleansing.

Thought for the Day: Washing up is good for the soul.

{no soundtrack today except a ticking clock, from which I had to break off the second hand as it was too loud.}